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Academic peers are all students in New Jersey in the same grade level who took the same previous assessments in the last year or two and had similar scale scores on those assessments. Academic peers are based only on assessment scores and are not based on demographic information.

Example

If Maria took the English Language Arts (ELA) grade 6 NJSLA assessment in 2022-23 and the ELA grade 5 NJSLA assessment in 2021-22, her academic peers for ELA would be other grade 6 students who had similar scale scores on the ELA grade 5 assessment in 2021-22.

A student growth percentile is a percentile ranking from 1 to 99 which explains a student’s academic progress compared to their academic peers.

SGPs are grouped into three levels:

• Low Growth: SGPs less than 35
• Typical Growth: SGPs between 35 and 65
• High Growth: SGPs greater than 65

Example

If Maria has an SGP of 70 for ELA, it means she performed as well as or better than 70% of her academic peers, which would be considered high growth.

If Maria receives an SGP of 40 for mathematics, that means she performed as well or better than 40% of her academic peers, which would be considered typical growth.

Median student growth percentiles (mSGPs) are a way to measure growth for groups of students, such as schools, grade levels, programs, and classes.

To calculate an mSGP, the student growth percentiles for all students in the group are ordered from smallest to largest, and the mSGP is the percentile in the middle of that list. This means that half of the students in the group have an SGP above the mSGP, and half of the students have an SGP below the mSGP.

Example

For a class of five students with the following ELA SGPs, the mSGP would be 42 because that is the SGP in the middle of the list.

• 31
• 36
• 42
• 56
• 82

Students in grades 4 through 7 receive an SGP in both ELA and mathematics. Students in grade 8 only receive an SGP for ELA because many students take the Algebra I assessment in grade 8 instead of the Math 8 assessment.

Only students who take two consecutive grade level assessments will receive an SGP. Students who only have one year of assessment results, students who are retained and take the same grade level assessment two years in a row, and students who take the Dynamic Learning Maps (DLM) assessment do not receive an SGP.

In New Jersey’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) state plan, mSGP is the measure of academic progress. Both the ESSA accountability system and the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) district evaluation system use mSGP, measured both for all students and by student group, as one of the indicators to identify schools and districts that need additional support.

The NJDOE also uses mSGPs as one of several measures to examine the work of educators under AchieveNJ. More information can be found on the AchieveNJ SGP webpage.

SGPs measure how students are performing compared to their academic peers, so it’s possible for students with high scale scores on prior year assessments to have high SGPs.

Example

If Maria had a prior score of 825 on the ELA Grade 4 assessment, she can still show growth in the high range (greater than 65) if she performs better than 65% of other students with similar prior scores.

Similarly, a school with high overall test performance can have a high mSGP if most students in the school have high SGPs. A school at any level of proficiency can have a low or high mSGP because it is based on the relative growth of all students.

In developing the student growth percentile model, it was important to build a model that could be used across assessment transitions. Because mSGPs measure growth as compared to academic peers, not an individual student’s improvement on a specific assessment, SGPs can be calculated even if the assessment changes.

Parent/guardians can find the student growth percentile for math and ELA for a student at the bottom of the Individual Student Report (ISR).

Districts can view SGPs for their students in the Student Growth Percentile Profile in NJ SMART.